I think I know why all these bad changes are made.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I have been thinking.
I have asked myself a couple of questions: Why are developers constantly making changes that are hurting their game? Why are they still punishing their player base on such massive scale over and over again? What are their intentions? They know from our posts what they are doing wrong and still, they are constantly making same mistakes.

There has to be something behind it.

Now I get it:
There are NO NEW players to this game, or, new players quit after finishing prologue.

My arguments:

How developers make money in this game:

1, though veterans / whales - for these category of players, they are constantly adding new character in order these people can buy them instantly (We are witnessing this everytime they add new character. There are superwhales, who have that character maxed even before that particular PVE event ends, so they need to obtain first covers from 42 packs. That must cost, I dunno, 1000 dollars/euros? )

2, though newbies - for these category of players, knowing that there are so many character in this game is discouraging. I´m in this game for almost a year and I´m telling you when I found out how characters there were (one year ago) I was overwhelmed and I almost deleted this game from my Steam library instantly. I have realized that I need to pay for roster slots if I don´t want to delete any character which I obtain. So I have paid. New player are surely overwhelmed as I was, and there are maybe twice as many characters now.
Solution from developers to this issue: decreasing price of the roster slots by half up to some number (this happened not very long ago).
Lets continue: new players want to have feeling of progression, they want to compete! It is OK, everyone from us want that! But these new players are put in same PVP brackets as we veterans are, so they are pawned hard. And that is discouraging. Nobody likes losing. And when nebies are discouraged, they don´t pay and they delete this game. I can´t blame them.

Solution: precisely what we are experiencing in the game right now!

Veterans were taken away from newbies - veterans fight veterans and newbies fight newbies. New players think they progress, they don´t know it is just illusion made by developers to fool them. Developers simply want them to stay in the game for as long as possible = pay them some money.

Results:
1, Developers want / need all veterans beside whales leave the game.
2, Developers want to encourage new players to spent more, so they must isolate them from veterans (in order not to be crushed in PVP, as stated before) and create them false ilusion of winning and progressing. They are already pursuing this goal of encouraging new players to stay by low PVE scaling (we all had PVE much easier when we were new, I remeber how happy I was when I was top 5 in PVE with my half covered 2* rosted and I was thinking how good I was when I defeated much superior rosters placed below me) and by literaly dividing players into two groups, which, as I just explained favoures new ones.

One little argument as an addon: We have be recently asked to help promote a game.

I honestly don´t know if any of this is true, but I can see some logic in developers behaviour if I´m right.

2

There is very little way to capitalize on the top players in MPQ.

In most other games, top players have more ability to mentor new players. With the disconnect this game has of always being Human vs. Computer, it loses this ability.

There are nuances in this game. If you had two live players, with the ability to chat, then when a top “celebrity” player would be able to talk and give tips to their opponent after the game. The videos try to add some connection, but even the best ones seem very disconnected.

Perhaps they should try having a setup, even if only for conventions and the development studio, where 2 live players can play against each other and talk. Then you can get some of the top players to come out to a convention and give hands on training videos. Show where the difference, other than just characters, are between how the top players approach the game, vs the average player.

The grumpy middle aged man in me says that many of the current 13-18 teens haven’t learned to work for anything yet. They feel entitled to win now, and not train, grow, and learn how to play at top levels.

3

really dont see why so called vets are pissed off about how they got screwed over in PVP i mean if you got most of your 3 stars cover why are you even playing for the covers. This is why we need 2 brackets.

Bracket one where top prizes are 3 stars like now
Bracket Two where the vets can fight it out for 4 stars.

4

Mainly, because there isn’t really any other place to play. While many of us enjoy challenging competition, we also enjoy playing with non-competitive portions of our roster.

I’d be quite happy with a “pass the cover down and take 500 ISO button.” Then I’d only keep the covers I need, and let the covers I don’t trickle down. However, they system they have designed doesn’t let me do that. In many of the CCGs/minature games I played, I would pass cards/figures off to the kids and teens I knew couldn’t afford them. Because there was no reason for cards I would never play to sit in my scrap pile. Groups of us would mentor new players. Why you might ask, for the health of the games, and because new players often see combinations that established players would never consider. This influx, keeps the games fresh, and provides allows everyone to grow.

The only mentoring in this game is all within your alliance. If I had any idea how to fix it, I would suggest them. The videos are OK. If they found a way to promote some of the puzzles GuntherBlobel created, with an article, it might help too.

Until then, I’ll be annoyed they limited the scope of the game trying to fix an issue in a way that I do not believe addresses the true problem. Nerfs (often), Shield Cooldowns and Roster Level MMR try to force evening the competition in a way that causes more problems than they solve. They are changes that can be implemented rapidly, but without full understanding of how it affects gameplay.

5

maybe you should get your own thread where you can whine about the same issue over and over again without creating a new thread about it every day? icon_e_wink.gif

I mean, really…aren’t a perceived 4 million threads about it enough? Do you really think the devs are some kind of super villains that target you personally or as a group (vets) to bully you to leave the game? Come on.

6

This one is no whine thread, or atleast I didn´t mean it to be one. Maybe if we players know more about background of the game, we could help in some way. But developers need to be less mysterious.